Hunt For Mangoes Ends In Tragedy

A 61-year-old neighborhood handyman's hunt for mangoes that he sold at six for a dollar killed him on Thursday morning.

The conditions he was working under couldn't have been worse for a brush with a power line, said Broward County Fire-Rescue paramedics.

John Floyd's white T-shirt was drenched with sweat as he used his 28-foot aluminum pole to knock down mangoes from the upper branches of the tree.

He was working about five blocks from his home.

His tennis shoes were damp from shuffling in dew-laden grass under the tree.

And a morning rain had saturated its leaves, spilling water on him as he climbed its branches for a better reach.

The downpour also soaked the three high-voltage power lines that cut through the treetops above the back yards on a stretch of Northwest Fourth Street in an unincorporated area of Broward County near Fort Lauderdale.

About 9 a.m., the pole touched one of the power lines, sending 7,600 volts rushing into Floyd's right shoulder, killing him, said Todd LeDuc, a spokesman for Broward County Fire-Rescue.

Floyd's death was the third fruit-picking fatality in South Florida in as many months, said Dale Thomas, a spokesman for Florida Power and & Light Co.

"This is tropical fruit season, and we don't tend to see these kinds of fatalities in the rest of the state," Thomas said.

"People must be careful when they are trimming, picking or pruning any kind of tree next to power lines."

The violence of the shock sent Floyd's heart into cardiac arrest, LeDuc said, and when paramedics arrived about 9:15 a.m., they weren't able to resuscitate him. Floyd was pronounced dead at Broward General Medical Center at 9:47 a.m.

"The heart runs on electric rhythms," said Dr. Lance Davis of the Broward County Medical Examiner's office, who conducted Floyd's autopsy. "Most of the time, the electricity destabilizes the rhythms. But with the high-tension lines, it fries the circuitry of the brain and the heart, and the heart can't restart."

Floyd's body was discovered limp and face down in Yolanda Sheffield's back yard at 3480 NW Fourth St.

"I looked out the window and saw him laying there," said Sheffield, 27, who was in the kitchen about to feed her newborn son. "I had told him not to come here because I didn't want to be responsible for something like this."

Sheffield said that in the past weeks, Floyd had collected all the lower-hanging fruit from the tree.

Well-known in the area as a handyman, Floyd would trim gardens for $10 and sell the mangoes he collected from other people's back yards in his makeshift fruit stand in front of his house on the 800 block of Northwest 34th Avenue, neighbors said. Floyd had two older sons and one daughter. His family declined to comment.

"He sold all kinds of odds and ends," said Katherine Dawson, 33, who would sometimes buy the mangoes. "You could get six for a dollar."

Using a white bicycle with a little cart attached to it, Floyd would criss-cross the neighborhood in search of mangoes.

"He was a nice and quiet man who would just pick up the mangoes," said Frances Smith, 77, Sheffield's neighbor. "It's so sad to go like this. He will be missed."

Diego Bunuel can be reached at dbunuel@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4523.